NEW YORK – July 17, 2014 – The Municipal Art Society of New York will bring together urban experts from across the country to explore the role of civic spaces in our cities, and discover ways to reinvent these spaces to meet new community needs. The Re-Imagining the Civic Commons project is supported by $250,000 from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

The yearlong exploration will create a broader national dialogue about the critical role that civic spaces play in city life. The project will begin by gathering insights through “City Soundings,” interactive sessions with diverse groups and leaders in specific cities: San Jose, Calif.; Charlotte, N.C.; and New York.

The first “City Sounding” begins today in Charlotte.

In the past, common civic spaces and places that were publicly funded and managed formed the backbone of a city’s “civic commons.” These spaces included parks, libraries, settlement houses, post offices, community centers, markets and public schools.  They provided necessary public services, but also opportunities to foster community identity, cultural expression, learning, and a sense of attachment.

But city life has changed; these places and spaces need to evolve to maintain their value in our communities. At the same time, constraints on city budgets require a new model for managing and creating new public spaces.

Re-Imagining the Civic Commons aims to take on this challenge.

Participants will discuss current challenges facing civic spaces in their cities, such as limited funding, quality of and access to services, and lack of safe, well-kept places to gather and connect.  They will also identify opportunities for reinventing and creating public spaces that can play a central role in civic engagement. These insights will be shared with other cities.

Additionally, Knight funding will support research into the ways that public assets have been used in the past and how their roles evolved. Expert urbanists and civic leaders will work together to come up with new uses for public spaces and better funding models to sustain them.

“Re-Imagining the Civic Commons will explore the implications and possibilities for our shared assets,” said Mary W. Rowe, director, urban resilience and livability, Municipal Art Society of New York. “What are the new forms of civic commons that are emerging in our cities? Are there new dynamic ways to imagine these places and spaces? What is the potential impact of new technologies and new forms of sharing on our civic commons? And are there new approaches to designing and managing the civic commons that are more adaptive, flexible and financially sustainable? We look forward to moving toward answering some of these questions.”

“Public spaces play a central role in getting people involved in their cities and promoting quality of life; however, there is a demand for these spaces to evolve and change in response to the new ways in which we live,” said Carol Coletta, Knight Foundation vice president for community and national initiatives. “By uncovering civic innovations that reimagine the role of these spaces we hope to increase their value in communities and build more successful cities.”

Coletta and Rowe recently led an interactive session around the topic of Re-Imagining the Civic Commons at the Next Libraries Conference in Chicago. They asked groups of librarians to examine various scenarios (i.e. pop-up civic spaces in locations across the city) to determine how libraries could help shape their communities for the better.

Re-Imagining the Civic Commons is curated by The Municipal Art Society of New York, a civil society advocacy organization focused on the role of the physical city in creating urban communities and neighborhoods that are economically, socially, culturally and environmentally sustainable and resilient. The organization is also working closely on a complementary project that explores new uses, management and financing options for publicly owned buildings in Canadian cities, funded by the Montreal-based J.W. McConnell Family Foundation.

Follow and contribute to Re-Imagining the Civic Commons on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram with #civiccommons.

About The Municipal Art Society of New York

For 120 years The Municipal Art Society has made New York a more livable city by advocating for excellence in urban planning and design, a commitment to historic preservation and the arts, and the empowerment of local communities to effect change in their neighborhoods. From saving Grand Central Terminal and the lights of Times Square, to establishing groundbreaking land-use and preservation laws that have become national models, MAS is at the forefront of New York’s most important campaigns to promote our city’s economic vitality, cultural vibrancy, environmental sustainability, and social diversity.  For more information, visit mas.org.

About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation supports transformational ideas that promote quality journalism, advance media innovation, engage communities and foster the arts. The foundation believes that democracy thrives when people and communities are informed and engaged. For more, visit www.KnightFoundation.org.

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CONTACTS:

Mollie Fullington, LAK PR, 917-346-6123, [email protected],

Anusha Alikhan, Director of Communications, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, 305-908-2677, [email protected]